Lu Vickers: Tourism and segregation at Silver Springs

By Lu Vickers Special to The Sun

Sunday

Feb 5, 2017 at 2:01 AM

On Emancipation Day, May 20, 1949, Carl Ray and Shorty Davidson, the owners of Silver Springs, one of Florida’s most famous attractions, opened Paradise Park “for colored people” about a mile down the Silver River. The day before, they placed a small ad in the classified section of the St. Petersburg Times announcing: “NOW! Colored Folks Can See Florida’s Silver Springs from Exclusive Paradise Park.”

The irony is that long before Ray and Davidson came along, African Americans worked at Silver Springs piloting steamboats and poling barges up the Ocklawaha and Silver rivers. In the late 1800s, African American men were among the entrepreneurs who took tourists out over the head springs in rowboats fitted with glass.

When Ray and Davidson bought Silver Springs in 1924, they upgraded the glass-bottom boats with motors and awnings, built bathhouses and beautified the landscape, adding the famous horseshoe palms the attraction would feature prominently alongside the glass-bottom boats in publicity photos and postcards. Now a state park, Silver Springs is still known for the glass-bottomed boats that carry tourists out over the head spring and down the river where Johnny Weismuller made many of his Tarzan movies.

In the early days, Ray and Davidson only hired African American men to pilot the glass-bottom boats, and these men were responsible for encouraging Silver Springs to become the only Florida attraction to open a separate park for African Americans during the days of Jim Crow. They wanted their families and friends to have access to one of Florida’s largest springs.

Eddie Leroy Vereen was one of those captains. Like many of the African American men who worked at Silver Springs, Vereen was born in the town of Silver Springs and grew up along the river. Once he started working as a glass-bottom boat captain, he would take family and friends out on his boat on the sly during off hours in defiance of segregation.

“They had to be really quiet,” Vereen’s nephew Henry Jones said. “Other boat drivers would do it, then churches would want to come.”

There was such demand by African Americans to see the springs, Jones said, that Ray and Davidson decided to open Paradise Park “to cut down on people wanting to go to Silver Springs, including the family and friends of boat drivers.”

They turned to Vereen to manage the new park because he was highly respected in the community. Reginald Lewis, who grew up working at the park, told a reporter that his grandfather attracted people to the park with his “warm personal touch. My grandfather patrolled that place like it was a kingdom.”

This kingdom included a white sand beach that bordered the Silver River, and a landscape filled with a colorful flowers and curvy palms. Picnic tables were first come, first served, and there was plenty of lush green grass for spreading a blanket. Patrons could get a snack at the soda fountain, buy a souvenir at the gift shop, or take a glass-bottom boat ride. They rode on the same boats as the patrons of Silver Springs, and would often pass each other on the river: African Americans on one side, whites on another.

Teenagers loved to dance at the pavilion where Vereen kept the juke box spinning with the latest hits. He knew what people liked. In 1956, he bragged about Paradise Park to a reporter: “I have traveled to every Negro recreational facility in Florida and nowhere have I found a set-up to compare to what we have here.”

And he was right. Paradise Park was special. Each Labor Day, the American Legion sponsored the Miss Paradise Park contest and young women from all over the state would compete for the title before thousands. Easter was known for sunrise services, wade-in-the water baptisms and fabulous egg hunts. At Christmas, Santa Claus arrived on a glass-bottom boat and handed out oranges from local groves.

Paradise Park also had a 19-foot-long alligator named Coochie and a pit where patrons could get a taste of the Ross Allen Reptile Institute, watching Willie Johnson or James Glover milk rattlesnakes.

Paradise Park had a run of 20 years, closing quietly in 1969 as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 took effect. Many felt that Paradise Park, like Silver Springs, should have been left open for everyone. Instead, the pavilion and snack stand were bulldozed and the white sandy beach destroyed.

The loss of the physical place has not dimmed the bright memories though. Carrie Johnson Parker-Warren, whose mother Alfronia Johnson won second place in the very first Miss Paradise Park contest, and whose sister Gloria Pasteur placed as well, was crowned Miss Paradise Park the year she completed. Her win must have been a “‘Johnson Girl Thing,’ she said smiling. “These memories will remain with me and my family forever.”

— Lu Vickers is the author of the book, with Cynthia Wilson-Graham, "Remembering Paradise Park: Tourism and Segregation at Silver Springs." They are speaking Saturday, Feb. 11, at 2 p.m. at the Matheson History Museum in Gainesville. The event is free and open to the public.

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